Here’s a short topical article, especially for those of us in the USA.
There was once a turkey who was hatched on a cold winter’s morning. Luckily, he lived with his family in a warm coop, where he had plenty of corn to eat, and spent his time playing with all the other little turkeys.
In springtime, as he got older, he and his friends would go out and play together in the farmyard. They always had plenty to eat and shelter from the elements. On occasion nice people would come and clean the coop, refill the corn bins, and make sure the fences were secure to keep away the bad cats and foxes.
“Gosh we’re lucky,” our turkey would say say to his friends on occasion. “What wonderful lives we have. We are fed and taken care of, and all we have to worry about is having fun.”
As the summer days got shorter and the evenings got colder, the turkeys continued to live the good life. The farmer turned on the heat in the coop, so the turkeys always had somewhere warm to go back to after playing in the yard. And since it was much colder now, they rarely went outside, and slowly they got fatter and fatter.
Our turkey continued to remark to his fellow fowl, “How lucky we are,” and they all agreed that they would rest up during the cold months so they could play hard again in the spring.
And then came Thanksgiving.
The award-winning essayist and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb tells this story about the turkey in his book The Black Swan to remind us how difficult it is to predict the future based on past events. From economic forecasting to even our daily lives, we simply cannot know what’s coming, and what's coming may be completely unlike anything in our past. "Consider that [the turkey's] feeling of safety reached its maximum when the risk was at the highest!" Taleb writes.
What can we learn from this parable as leaders? As business executives? As friends and parents? How should we respond? What can we do differently? Reflect on our unfortunate turkey, because there are many lessons that can be taken away—I’d love to hear yours. But I’m going to leave you for now: I have a turkey dinner waiting for me.
Happy Thanksgiving!
